Kissing Toads (23 page)

How he said that with a straight face I don't know. Behind Basilisa, I saw Harry, who caught my eye and rolled his. For once, I bit back a smile.

‘You tell me about garden but not about
la televisión
,' Basilisa reiterated. ‘You know I—'

‘I told you there might be a feature. I didn't know how things would develop.' To his credit, HG managed to interrupt her without sounding as if he was interrupting – a major diplomatic achievement. And he lied so well even I almost believed him. ‘Why don't you join us for a drink, meet everybody, then we can talk about it.'

Everybody blenched in anticipation.

‘I go to my room,' Basilisa announced, retrieving the initiative. ‘I get changed.
Then
I have a drink and
then
we talk.'

She swept from the room in triumph, though there was nothing in particular to be triumphant about. But she was clearly the sort of person who favoured the triumphant exit as much as the dramatic entrance. I wondered if she ever went in or out of a room normally.

As she retreated, I could hear her tossing orders over her shoulder. Harry –
Winkworth
– followed her, presumably picking them up. I bet he behaves like a proper butler with her, I thought. It should have annoyed me, but it didn't.

  

The arrival of Basilisa was the one thing that could have made everyone appreciate Alex and Brie. Alex might be a spoiled child who had never grown up, but, bar the practical jokes, he was quite a nice spoilt child, who responded well to threats of being horribly murdered if he didn't behave himself. Brie was a bad actress but at least she wasn't trying to hog the limelight.

Basilisa was a nightmare.

She wanted to star in the historical scenes, she wanted to pose in the reconstructed maze, she wanted us to film her efforts at interior design. ‘This is makeover show, no? I know all about makeover. When I come to Dunblair it is – how you say? –
andrajoso
, old-fashioned, boring, boring. Furniture, curtains, carpets – all dark, all dull. I change everything. I bring colour,
vitalidad
. You will make film of my
transformación
, you will show everyone I am not just a beautiful woman, I am great artist, great imagination. What you mean, your show is just about garden?
Estúpida
, who wants to go outside in Scotland? Is cold, is grey, is rain all the time. Who cares about garden? You want to film here, you film my rooms. Garden not important. You film what I say, or you leave.'

The manure was flying – it was time to call Crusty. But I didn't. I've been shot at in Kosovo, I told myself (even if the sniper had been aiming elsewhere); I've been haunted in Surrey; if I can't handle this, I can't handle anything. I had a private conversation with HG and then deployed the crew to spend a day shooting Basilisa in her various interiors.

‘We're wasting
time
,' Russell muttered, his rather lugubrious face becoming actively moribund. ‘Not to mention the cost.'

‘HG's covering it,' I whispered. ‘I arranged it with him.'

‘Clever girl. All the same—'

‘It's a nuisance, but it's not as if we're going to use it. HG asked to keep the film afterwards. I suppose he doesn't want it turning up on one of those celebrity hatchet-jobs on
ITV
Scandal
.'

‘Probably needs it for his divorce,' Russell said.

The real trouble started with Basilisa's determination to appear in the historical scenes. Initially she elected to play the murdered wife of HG's laird, a choice many of us thought deeply significant. (‘Perhaps he'll take the hint,' Russell said.) We were forced to remove the actress who had been given the role, causing issues with the union and a threatened strike by all the minor roles. We then had to re-employ the actress in question on the realisation that Basilisa couldn't do an English accent, let alone a Scots one, and we would therefore need another vocal stand-in. Like Brie, Basilisa was not informed of this. Meanwhile those of the cast who had actually struck had to be routed out of the Dirk and Sporran, along with several crew members who had come out in sympathy. The electrician, Mick, was found to be, as Russell put it, spark out, after an excess of sympathetic Laphroaig, and the cameraman, Dick – all too well named – had got his hands on some quality Leb and was useless for the rest of the day. By the time I had calmed everyone who needed calming and Russell had rallied the troops, we all wound up back in the pub – even Alex, Brie, Delphi and Ash – in a rare display of team spirit, the spirit in question being mostly single malt.

There's nothing like a common enemy to turn lesser enemies into bosom friends.

‘If you try to fob the Basilisk off on me,' Ash said with uncharacteristic heat, ‘there will be another ghost on the castle roster. A Spanish one.'

‘Couldn't you arrange for her to be haunted?' I said wistfully.

‘She wouldn't notice. There are some people who are so self-centred, so oblivious to everything around them, that phantoms simply bounce off them. The only atmosphere Basilisa's aware of is the one inside her head.'

‘No intuition,' said Brie. ‘I can tell.'

‘She's an Insensitive,' I supplied.

‘You said it,' murmured Ash. Under stress, he was becoming a lot more human. He was even drinking beer, an improbable drink for an elf.

The pub was named after the landlord and barman, Angus McSporran and Dirk McTeith, who had been on a roll ever since the TV crowd hit town. Now, they were more than ready to join in the fun, relating tales of the Basilisk's unpopularity in the village, through which she was prone to drive, much too fast, in the Ferrari, splashing old ladies with mud, flattening sheep, and narrowly missing innocent children. Apparently she had once had a run-in with a bull (no doubt her Spanish blood taking over), where both sides had threatened legal action after the bull was severely bruised and the Ferrari gored. Maids working at the castle had been terrorised or summarily dismissed for trivial offences; even Dougal McDougall had been fired for aggressive dourness, though reinstated later the same day after HG made it clear he was outside Basilisa's jurisdiction. Local opinion was largely in HG's favour – ‘We call him the Laird noo, though only tae his face,' Angus said. ‘He dinna say so, but he's muckle keen on it' – but his wife, it was felt, was suitable material for the ducking stool and burning at the stake. (The Scots are old-fashioned, and don't really believe in divorce.)

‘Mebbe, when the accurrsed maze is replanted, ye could lose her in it,' Dirk said.

‘No chance,' said Delphi. ‘She'd be too busy carpeting it in lilac fur and installing decorative totem poles at every intersection.' Although Alex was to hand in fiancé mode, she appeared to be hitting it off unexpectedly well with Dirk, who was rather good-looking in a brawny, Scottish way.

The evening slid comfortably downhill. We missed dinner, dining off crisps and sandwiches stuffed with what might have been haggis, none of which did much to soak up the alcohol. By closing time, we were on the toasts, drinking not just to the downfall of the Basilisk – ‘Anyone got a magic sword?': Russell – but anything else that came to mind. Alex and Delphi's marriage, Brie's breast implants, the Atkins Diet, the F-you Diet, independence for Scotland, the success of the local football team (Dinnaguigle), the failure of the rival team (Midloathsome), Shakespeare, Robbie Burrns, Robbie Williams, and Fenris the bichon.

(As far as I can recall, the proposers of the toasts were, in order: Dirk's girlfriend, Nick the sound recordist, Brie, Russell, Dougal McDougall, assorted locals, more assorted locals, the reinstated actress, Angus McSporran, Brie again, and Alex.)

Afterwards, I remember noticing that two of the villagers (I assumed they were villagers) had accents which didn't quite match and joined in rather too fervently with all the wrong toasts, but we were all too far gone to pay any attention.

By the time those of us based at Dunblair came to stagger the mile and a half homewards, the problem of Basilisa Ramón had dwindled to a mere joke, to be laughed over and forgotten. We had that group high that you can only get after confronting trouble together and overcoming it, a feeling normally associated with wartime scenarios like the Resistance and the Blitz. The enemy had been outfaced and outjockeyed; we were the tops.

Which goes to show how wrong you can be.

The first intimation of disaster came when I tottered down to the dining room the following day, half an hour after shooting was due to start, feeble apology at the ready. But there was no one to apologise to. The only occupant of the room was the Basilisk herself, sitting at the table, simultaneously drinking black coffee, smoking a black cheroot, and painting her nails black. Well, crimson-black anyway. She wore an eau de Nil negligee trimmed in pink swansdown, the sort of thing Ginger Rogers might have carried off in a thirties film, provided it was in monochrome. First thing in the morning on top of a bad hangover it was not a pleasant sight. I sank into a chair, feeling slightly queasy. Harry, who had evidently been hovering in the vicinity, looked me over thoughtfully and said, ‘Don't touch the coffee: I'll bring another pot. Time for the
really
strong stuff, I think.'

‘It is good you are here,' Basilisa said, surveying me with a distaste which was almost certainly unfair. My complexion might be pale green (I could feel it), but at least it matched the negligee. ‘I have an announcement to make.'

I mumbled something which she took for encouragement. Not that she needed any.

‘Last night, I read the script.
El papel
I play, it is not enough important. I think I play someone else.' My stomach shrank in horror. ‘The big part, it is Eleezabet Courtnee. I am going to play that.'

If I had had the forethought to eat more the previous evening, I would have thrown up on the spot.

Wild ideas spun through my lurching brain. We could film Basilisa as Elizabeth secretly, without Delphi knowing, then bin the lot afterwards. But it would never work, even if HG agreed to pay for it: it would take far too long. We had the garden to get on with, and the chances of keeping it from Delphi were nil. Oh de nil. Or Russell and I could try to find a way to convey to Basilisa, tactfully, that she was completely unsuited to playing a nineteenth-century English heiress. Or . . .

At that moment Morty came in, wearing a glow of good health that made me suspect he'd been at the make-up long before shooting. He gave me a rather familiar pat on the shoulder and greeted Basilisa with an enthusiasm which might or might not have been insincere. He'd been in the pub the previous night with the rest of us, drinking to her undoing, but instinct told me he was a sail-trimmer who would go with the prevailing wind. Or hurricane.

Equally, he might have felt her Amazonian good looks outweighed the minor flaws in her personality.

‘
Buenos días
,' she said. ‘I am telling Senora Rooth –' that was how my name came out – ‘today we must start again to film
la historia del castillo
. I am to play Eleezabet. Is best part, so I play it. I am great actress. You fire whoever have it before.'

Morty's mouth opened and shut, fishlike. ‘Yerse,' he said at last, achieving what passed for a smile. ‘I'm sure you'll be . . . very good. Very good. Great idea, isn't it, Ruth?'

I glared at him. With eyes undoubtedly bloodshot in my pale green face, the effect must have been horrifying. ‘I don't think . . .'

The advent of Harry with extra-strong coffee created a timely interruption.

Russell was the next to hear the good news. Almost as soon as he came in Basilisa seized on him to discuss
her
motivation in the role, if not Elizabeth's – ‘In Spain, I am already big star. Now, I will be big star on English TV too' – and Morty took the opportunity for a low-voiced conversation with me. Whether I wanted one or not.

‘I can see you don't like it,' he said, perceptively, ‘but honestly, Delphinium's not that good an actress. Basilisa can't be worse – she might be better, and she looks terrific.'

‘So does Delphi,' I snapped back, ‘and she may not be Cate Blanchett, but she's a damn sight more convincing as an English heiress than Carmen Miranda here. She also happens to be nearer the right age – a
lot
nearer.'

‘You try telling that to HG,' Morty said. ‘He may find her a handful, but he always gives her what she wants, in case you haven't noticed. I reckon once they're in the bedroom she knows exactly how to get her own way. They say she has a tongue longer than a sea serpent and enough suction for a turbocharged vacuum cleaner.'

‘If you're thinking of finding out,' I hissed savagely, ‘never mind her married state – you'd be safer having oral sex with a rattlesnake.'

‘Delphinium may be your friend, but you're a fool if you go out on a limb for her,' Morty persisted. I remembered she had brushed him off, a long time ago – but he was the type who nursed grudges. And hell hath no fury like a TV presenter scorned. ‘Don't expect John Beard-Trenchard to support you: he'll go with HG all the way. If you want to keep your job you'll back Basilisa, whatever your private feelings.' He added, with an air of reasonableness that made my palm itch to hit him: ‘After all, Delphinium will still be swanning around in the garden. Losing the acting role is no big deal for her.'

What I might have said I don't know. The coffee was kicking in, my head was clearing, and all my most irrational brain cells were going into action. He was right in a way: Delphi would still star as co-presenter, she wasn't a brilliant actress, and the part of Elizabeth Courtney would probably do little for her career. But that wasn't the point. (She'd also got me my current job, but that wasn't it either.) What mattered was that she was my friend. Friends stick together, regardless of cold logic. Friendship always comes first.